Hong Kong, 2001
Director: Tsui Hark
Starring: Ekin Cheng, Cecilia Cheung, Zhang Ziyi, Sammo Hung

The Zu Mountain stands by itself in another world. When the evil Insomnia slowly starts to move along and destroy everything that stands in his way, only one clan has the power to stop this war lord. Omei, with the support of Zu’s toughest warriors, the Omei Clan will risk their lives to bring back the peace of the Zu Mountains.

This film wants to be an epic so bad that it overwhelms and overpowers everything. Tsui Hark is relying on computer generated special effects and environments rather than narrative and character development. The result is that the film is trying way too hard to be intense in every moment and even too artistic.  It is somehow just nonsense to watch after a while. The film contains way too many characters that are portrayed by the stars (Ekin Cheng, Cecilia Cheung and Zhang Ziyi to name a few). It’s very disappointing that the film doesn’t have room for most of them.

Action sequences are choreographed by the master Yuen Woo-Ping. But most of the martial arts sequences in this film depend on the use of CGI to show their powers and their weapons.

This is his re-visit, upgrade version of his film Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain. This again has the re-visitation curse all over it. Did Lucas put him up to this? I don’t know. He tried to do what he did with the original, to break all the rules and give us a spectacular fantasy film.  He failed. Maybe he should re-visit this film again in twenty years from now and see if he can make it even worse.

Review by Shogo.